Bucharest vs. Other Regional Capitals: How Attractive Is It for Foreigners?

By Bucharest Team

Articles

In recent years, Central and Eastern Europe has become increasingly visible on the map of international mobility. Capitals such as Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw are now well-established destinations for expats, international students, and mobile professionals. Within this regional context, Bucharest remains a special case: attractive in certain respects, yet still peripheral in the regional hierarchy.

Assessing a city’s attractiveness to foreigners requires looking at multiple dimensions: the size of the foreign population, economic opportunities, quality of life, urban infrastructure, and the city’s capacity for social integration.

The size of the foreign population

Compared to other regional capitals, Bucharest has a relatively small share of foreign residents. Recent estimates place the proportion of foreign nationals at under 7% of the city’s population, including both EU and non-EU citizens.

By comparison:

Prague exceeds 20% foreign residents,
Vienna (often included in the broader Central European comparison) exceeds 30%,
Budapest and Warsaw consistently rank above Bucharest, both in absolute numbers and in the diversity of socio-professional profiles.

This gap suggests that Bucharest is not yet a primary destination city, but rather a place of transit or short- to medium-term economic opportunity.

Expat profiles: work-driven vs. lifestyle-driven migration

One of the clearest differences between Bucharest and other regional capitals lies in the type of foreign population it attracts.

In Bucharest, a significant share of foreign residents come from South and Southeast Asia (Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh) and are primarily employed in:

manual labor,
low value-added services,
temporary or circular work arrangements.

By contrast, cities such as Prague or Warsaw attract larger numbers of:

IT, finance, and research professionals,
international students,
expats who choose the city for quality of life, not solely for employment.

This distinction has a direct impact on international visibility, reputation, and long-term retention of foreign residents.

Cost of living: a real but fragile advantage

One of Bucharest’s main competitive advantages remains its relatively low cost of living, particularly in terms of:

housing rents,
private services,
daily consumer expenses.

However, this advantage is increasingly fragile. Rapid increases in housing prices and mounting pressure on urban infrastructure are narrowing the gap with Budapest or Warsaw—without offering the same level of public services or urban coherence in return.

In other words, Bucharest is cheaper, but not necessarily better.

Quality of life and urban infrastructure

When it comes to public transport, green spaces, administrative predictability, and urban services, Bucharest continues to lag behind its regional competitors. This pattern is consistently reflected in international quality-of-living rankings for expats, where the Romanian capital typically occupies mid-to-lower positions.

Chronic issues—traffic congestion, pollution, fragmented infrastructure—are often tolerated by local residents but become deterrents for foreigners who have alternative cities to choose from.

Integration and social capital

Another critical factor is the city’s capacity to integrate foreign residents. Bucharest does host active expat communities, but these are often:

segmented,
weakly connected to local urban life,
heavily dependent on informal networks or corporate environments.

In contrast, cities such as Prague or Budapest offer more developed ecosystems for cultural, educational, and social integration, including public services more clearly adapted to international populations.

Where Bucharest realistically stands

Bucharest is attractive:

to employers seeking labor,
to young professionals willing to accept trade-offs,
to non-EU economic migrants.

It is less attractive:

to lifestyle-oriented expats,
to international families,
to senior professionals prioritizing stability and urban quality.

Compared to other capitals in the region, Bucharest is not yet an expat magnet, but rather a city in an intermediate position: economically attractive enough to draw foreigners, yet insufficiently coherent—urbanistically and institutionally—to retain them over the long term.

Transforming Bucharest into a competitive regional capital for expats will depend not on salaries or costs alone, but on urban governance quality, infrastructure investment, and genuine integration policies.